Falling space debris [URL=http://news.yahoo.com/space-ball-drops-namibia-133326985.html]made headlines[/URL] (AFP) this week after a "metallic space ball" found in Namibia, Africa was determined to be made of a "metal alloy known to man."
[i]The hollow ball with a circumference of 1.1 metres was found near a village in the north of the country some 750 kilometres from the capital Windhoek, according to police forensics director Paul Ludik.
Locals had heard several small explosions a few days beforehand, he said.
With a diameter of 35 centimeters, the ball has a rough surface and appears to consist of "two halves welded together".[/i]
NASA and the European Space Agency were contacted and while the metal ball's specific origin (i.e. spacecraft) hasn't been determined, it has been recognized as a propulsion tank — "a tank that held fuel for rocket thrusters on a spacecraft."
According to [URL=http://geeked.gsfc.nasa.gov/?p=8309]Scott Hull[/URL], an orbital debris engineer at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland, the tank is "probably titanium, since it has no discernible rust or burn-through spots."
[i]"Tanks like this survive reentry relatively frequently," he said.[/i]
Indeed, a quick search of the internet turns up several [URL=http://www.orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/reentry/recovered.html]similar tanks[/URL] that were found in southern Africa, Australia and Latin America over the past two decades.